By Gabe Trodd
Earlier this week, Chris Grayling’s proposals for those involved in anti-social behaviour to have their mobile phones confiscated, aimed at helping "disrupt" gang activity and making a point to troublemakers, were widely met with a lukewarm response – the proposals were dismissed as gimmicky, superficial and liable to increase crime. Subsequently, the Shadow Home Secretary casually began an article entitled ‘We Need Fresh Ideas on Knife Crime’, at Comment is Free, with the following paragraph:
"I was told the story by an officer in one of our young offender institutions. It was, apparently, the latest initiation ritual in one of the gangs. Take your knife, go out and find an innocent passer by, and mutilate them with that knife. Then you can join the gang."
Let’s be clear, the aim here wasn’t to reach out to young people likely to be involved in patterns of criminality - how many of them will be logged on to Comment is Free? Following a nightmarish fortnight for Cameron & Co., comprised mainly of "chicken feed" and Coulsongate, it was announced in the annual crime figures (the British Crime Survey) that: the murder rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest in 20 years, with 648 homicides recorded in 2008/09 – 136 fewer than the year before; the economic recession has had a limited impact, with a lower than expected 1% increase in domestic burglary; and the overall crime rate in England and Wales is officially declared to have been stable in the past year with an estimated 10.7m offences. There has been 5% rise in fraud offences, including credit card and online fraud, and a 10% increase in shoplifting recorded by the police – although, as Grayling knows, these aren’t the type of offences that grab headlines or concern the electorate the most.
The Shadow Home Secretary recognised a 17% fall in gun crime was not matched by similar progress on knife crime where, despite a high-profile government campaign, the number of robberies involving knives fell only 2% to 16,702 cases.
But here is where the Conservatives are badly let down by Grayling’s opportunism and cynicism in approaching his brief as Shadow Home Secretary. Despite the sustained fall in crime in England and Wales over the past 14 years, 75% of the public believe crime is rising nationally. More significantly, the Centre for Social Justice’s own figures show that 85% of 10-19 year olds who report carrying a knife cite the need for protection as their reason for carrying a knife.
The negative and imbalanced portrayal of British youngsters in the media, illustrated by Shadow Home Secretary at the Guardian without offering any real solutions, does nothing but whip up insecurity, resentment and division around individual acts of youth crime. The result is a culture of fear and alienation, which inevitably filters down to vulnerable youngsters, seeking status and protection through arming themselves.
Grayling has separately accused the Home Office of ‘massaging’ the figures. The truth is that the Home Affairs brief is a portfolio that needs to rise above partisanship, party politics and strategic positioning. It’s a real shame for those people doing admirable work in this area, across the country, that the Shadow Home Secretary fails to grasp this; many people will now feel that the sooner Tory PPC Shaun Bailey takes over this brief for the Conservatives, the better for everyone involved in this area.
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We have very tough criminal laws and very high prison population.
It's all very well for Conservative activists to present the rhetoric about Broken Britain, family units etc. But until they can offer some policies beyond possibly marginally changing tax rates for some married couples, cutting police costs by 10%, and confiscating mobile phones, then that' all the Conservative will continue to offer - empty rhetoric and sound bites.
As I say, if you try to hit them where it hurts, they'll hit back twice as hard and the situation will escalate.
My parents were relatively strict, but at the same time so was the rest of society. I recieved the strap at school, was made to kneel in front of a statue for painting a black flower, the local policeman gave me the occasional slap if I was out of line and my mother wasn't afraid to slap the back of my legs if I misbehaved in public. But things have changed, raise a hand to anyone and you're in trouble. Defend your home against a gang of thugs and you're likely to end up in trouble yourself.
I'm not suggesting being soft on crime, but there needs to be a bit more thought than fines, baliffs, benefit cuts or prison. They may work for a number of people in the short term, but long term, what do you do when those parents get out of prison? They've been imprisoned for someone elses crime, so they're going to be a little peeved to say the least and will have zero respect for the system. Then what? Send them back to prison at a cost of £30k each per year?
The only two times jail and longer sentances were encouraged was under Michael Howard and David Blunkett, both resulted in less crime.
But my goodness what hypocrisy!
Lets have a think back to Labour's glorious record in this department.
1) Head of communications, Mr. Mandelson, twice dismissed from the cabinet for impropriety, and one of those incidents could have landed him in jail for fraud.
2) Alistair Campbell, who concocted a false intelligence dossier that brought us to war on a lie, resulting in perhaps hundreds of thousands of people being killed. In the process, a gentle and honourable weapons inspector was hounded to his death.
You people are so tribal your beyond parody.
"Research conducted by YouGov shows that:
•just under half (49%) of people believe that children are increasingly a danger to each other and adults
•43% agree something has to be done to protect us from children
•45% think that children are feral in the way they behave.
A survey conducted amongst Barnardo’s young people – just over half of whom have been in trouble – found that most of them thought that young people get into trouble because of boredom and peer pressure.
Of the 393 youngsters, aged between 10 and 23:
•44% said bad behaviour is encouraged when the media portrays their peers as misbehaving
•84% said young people get into trouble because of boredom
•88% said having more things to do and places to go might stop young people getting into trouble
•32% would go to friends for help if they were in trouble."
I think the public has a fairly accurate idea about a % of children in the UK.
Very, very poor.
If you're trying, Gabe, to boost the morale of the government's supporters (and even on LL, they're a bit of a rarity) then you have my best wishes and my sympathies too but aren't you demeaning yourself by using a public forum to this end?
As fertiliser.
Having said that since Labour's only counter-attack in respect to Tory policy these days is to copy it, I bet it won't be too long before Alan Johnson announces some similar New Labour initiative!
Labour and Conservative slagging each other off in regards to populism and crime policy is pot kettle black.
However, I notice that statistics for random violent attacks are missing from your article. This is the sort of crime that really scares people, and with good reason. A generation ago Britain was known to have a low rate of violent crime, according to the EU we are now the the most violent country in Europe.
A good of this feral violence, stems, of course, from family breakdown. You can blather on and spin all the statistics you want - no one believes anything New Labour puts out anymore, instead we believe the evidence of our own eyes.
Last night, my girlfriend was attacked on the way home by 4 teenage girls in a completely unprovoked assault. She has lost a front tooth and has cuts and bruises. A month ago, a man was randomly attacked outside my flat in broad daylight by 20 youths, was whipped with a belt and lost the sight of an eye. So please don't tell me that reports of the 'feral young' are nothing but a media myth.
Here is an excerpt from the highly respected City Journal on British crime. Anyone who reads this post should also read this to get a more rounded picture: the full article is here - http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_british-crime.html:
"The British government derives its rosy estimates of the falling crime rate from two separate sets of statistics. The first, Police Recorded Crime, does indeed show a recent fall in the total number of crimes recorded in England and Wales—from 6.01 million in 2004 to 4.95 million in 2008. But the long-term trend is quite different. It shows just 2.69 million crimes recorded in 1980, a number that rose steadily until 1992, when it reached 5.59 million. After a decline in the nineties, it began rising again, until 2004, when it hit that all-time high of just over 6 million. While the recent drop to 4.95 million may be welcome, it is still high by anyone’s standards: to find the last year that the British police recorded fewer than that, you have to go back to 1999.
Defenders of the statistics counter that changes in crime-counting rules kicked in during 1998, pushing the number of recorded crimes up. Perhaps—but that doesn’t account for the even grimmer picture painted by police records of violent crime. Sure enough, when the rules changed in 1998, the total number of violent crimes recorded jumped from 231,000 to 503,000. But then, even after the switch, it continued to rise sharply, hitting a peak of 1.06 million in 2006. That number has since declined only slightly: in 2008, the number of police-recorded violent crimes stood at 961,000. When it comes to violence, in other words, Police Recorded Crime actually confirms the public’s general view."
So, once again, we have yet another piece of deceitful NuLab spin which doesn't show the full picture of a long term rise in violent crime under Labour.
I got as far as Dairylea...
In case you were in any doubt... I don't think the Director of Tory Communications allegedly overseeing a campaign and culture of criminality and hacking into people's phones will go down well with people. It's not a great image to have. Nightmarish.
** Following a nightmarish fortnight for Cameron & Co., comprised mainly of "chicken feed" and Coulsongate... ** and couldn't get any further. When it comes to relative nightmares, Cameron & Co may have eaten a portion of Dairylea while Brown & Co are suffering the after-effects of an entire, mature and sweating Gorgonzola (henceforth Gordonzola?). What can be the point of derailing your own argument, whatever it might be, with this sort of specious claptrap?
It's is startling to many that that the criminal age of responsibility in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales is 10 years old.
I guess these issues demonstrate the worth of Surestart and things like that - which, increasingly it looks like the Tories would completely demolish.
Agreed, there are many other reasons to. But I was questioning the valididty of ASBOs not devising attempting to devise a holistic solution.
I think the best policies and solutions to these types of issues will involve the communities themselves, won't have one eye on media positioning and will address both the inequalities that exist in urban communities - schooling, housing etc. It needs a holistic approach because urban crime and anti-social behaviour is a web of personal, societal and often simply opportunist factors.
Were you the guy who was posting underneath my waste management article? If so, I'm impressed/vaguley threatened by your Whitehall expertise. That was like talking to a senior DEFRA policy official.
I think things like youth crime have to be treated with far more sensitivity and for solutions to have far more depth than those of Cameron and Grayling. What can you say about them? They're completely one dimensional - to the Tories, it's just about whipping up a frenzy and then posturing as being 'tough'. In 2009, with globalised communities etc., the UK needs a multi-discplinary approach to these issues. That isn't going to come from David Cameron.
I don't think it boils down to anything really - it's only David Cameron and Chris Grayling that want to boil these issues down to soundbites and one dimensional policies.
The causes of crime span the entire Whitehall portfolio- nearly every department. But when you look at it, with a bird's eye view - crime rates in countries with the highest inequalities (USA, Russia, South Africa and Brazil) are the highest. Plus David Lammy’s post-Thatcherite, consumerist ‘culture of instant gratification’ concept is really relevant to any serious discussion of anti-social behaviour and urban criminality.
All the Tories can really offer are soundbites and gimmicks, whilst at the same time talking down urban communities, youngsters etc.
If the corruption is to deep, if careerists and sycophants have the party firmly in thier grip or so far as it would take my lifetime to sort out. I shall leave. A number of people are worried about my leaving the party. This is not because the sun shines out of my butt, but because I am a passionate and ethical activist. As a councillor I did many things politicians don't do, but ought to do.
Many young people now seek the easy path to power. They want to lead before they have even learnt to follow. They want to dictate policy without accountability. They have no desire to go down in history as having achieved anything, they simply don't give a XXXX. Politics to them is just a process, a set of hurdles, a sequence of steps to meet the objective. The objective being to show the world how great they are and to have power over others. Power of course is a prison. I told Harriet Harman a few weeks back in an email, I have more "power" than you do Harriet, at least I can speak my mind and not what was written for me to repeat.
If these ambitious monsters (who will give life to the BNP due to their lack of understanding/consideration for the gap between the people and thier egos) have the party under control via groups such as "Progress" and various "think tanks", if an autocracy has formed within the party, then it is as bad as the days of the militancy. A right wing dominance is as bad as a left wing dominance.
I shall not leave the party, the party will have left me.
If I stand as an independent I shall call you, thanks.
Besides which, I look a complete lemon in a suit which is why I abandoned the corporate world and business partnerships. I much prefer the less informal community pressure groups and getting involved in what I view as practical politics. I'd imagine it is more rewarding in a lot of ways as well.
Very serious about helping out though Ralph, you have a sensible approach to issues and I'd imagine you wouldn't be pushed around as many are in the political arena. I'd love to be asking you to run as a Labour MP, but you know my views about the Labour Party as it is at the moment and I do believe you'd make a much bigger difference being an independant as things are in the HoP at the minute.
You have a pragmatic and measured quality that is not common and you rationalise debate in a fair and even manner.
Thank you for your kind comment. I am truly flattered.
I spoke to Alex and I told him I was very impressed with you.
Politicians argue over money and oil and other things, but there is one commodity that is more valuable than platinum...it is time and how we choose to use it.
So thank you.
Actually when you return to the UK, if you decide to go for it ask Alex for my email address and please get in touch. I will help in anyway I possibly can.
Erm, isn't that leading up to 'Hug a Hoodie'?
I do wish Labour and its supporters would make it's mind up where they stand on youth crime. It seems to be that it is not the Tories position, whatever strand of it, it may be.
If the fine isn't paid then take it out of any benefits they may be entitled to or send the Bailiffs round and take goods to the value of. That will hit the parents and rightly so. Shouldn't have brought a nasty piece of work in to the world. Why not consider sending them (or their parents) to prison? Too tough? They will learn.
My parents ruled with a rod of iron. Did I resent it at the time? Sure, at times. Have I ever been in trouble with anyone for anything? No, except one speeding fine.
In terms of witness protection I fear you are right though I have no experience or knowledge of it, if what you say is true then it is a disgrace.
I want these Gangbuster to be an elite force. They have to be damn good. From my military experience know this can be done, groups can all be infiltrated and dealt with. Evidence can be gathered, there just has to be a strong ethos and political willingness to do it. Mistakes will be made, that is life and part of the process.
Bill, you are starting to make me feel that I should sort these things out myself personally, for heavens sake we need to sort these people out.
What I would do with ten REAL politicians with conviction to benefit thier country instead of the sorry fools we are stuck with.
Logically you'd think that witness protection would be the answer, but unlike the protection levels you see in the films, the equivelant here in the UK is very different. A witness will be given somewhere to live, a little bit of cash to subsidise the move and thats about it. Their name is rarely changed, they still have to school their kids and there is no police protection. If they ring the local police station in the town or village they have been moved to, it will still take an hour or more for anyone to come out to them as the police are rather 'busy'.
The same goes for informers, they know that their own gangs have equal or better facilities than the police for tracking someone here in the UK, so if they 'grass' they know fine well that it is game over for them. They can run, they can hide, but the minute they register for council tax and that council sells on their information, they are found. Register for a telephone, the information is sold on and they are found. So unless they want to live in the dark ages or perhaps a tent in a field somewhere, they know they'll be found eventually, so it is easier to tow the line than to become an informer.
Don't know what the answer is Ralph, but it isn't spending money on gangbusters. The argument for making regular employment pay better to eliminate the need to get involved in crime is valid, but completely useless when confronted with individuals who derive pleasure as well as the money from extortion.
ASBOs are ridiculous and do not tackle anything. There was a lady in Yorkshire who was given an ASBO for throwing 3 sticks of rhubarb at her brother (and I'm not joking). She may have had some shame for being given it, but do you really think a young thug bothers? They actually brag about getting an ASBO, and if you haven't got one in certain areas, you are not part of the gang.
So to your idea. £250 fine increasing to £500 if it isn't paid within 28 days. Where do you think they will get that sort of money? Seriously, where will they get it even if they want to pay it? And what will be the consequences if they don't pay it? Prison for a fortnight?
I know where they'll get it, if they consider paying it. They'll break into your house and steal that nice TV or your computer and just to show you how little respect they have for society, they'll deficate on your rug, just for a laugh. If they are caught, whats the worst that can happen? A fine of say £250? A fortnight in prison or some community service?
I'd also take issue with the idea that Home Affairs ought to be 'above party politics': nothing is above politics. I dispute the idea that political debate is something we ought only to subject little things to, and instead on principle leave anything deemed important to the government to deal with without fear of criticism or dissention. I'd contend that actually it ought to be the other way around.
Dealing with gangs is a difficult business. When I was young being part of a gang meant building dens and haveing harmless adventures. We got into trouble but we never harmed anyone. I dare say some gangs are harmless, but the kinds of "gang" we hear about now (not from the media I might add) are made up of nasty little and not so little psycopaths that run riot in the manner of "A Clockwork Orange". Of course the majority are not so bad, but these nasty groups are convinced they are living in the drabs of New York and convinced (despite the fact none are starving) of thier own misfortune.
I wrote to Harriet Harman suggesting that a specialist group of police be tasked with dealing with the more violent gangs. All they have to do is follow the trail of blood and work with the local youth to discover what is going on. They need to categorise gangs and deal with them. At the moment there are too many gangs getting away with blue murder as noone is stupid enough to upset them and communities are too divided to work together as a collective (strange the politicians don't realise this as they brought it about...there is no accounting for the depths of thier stupidity). Theses "gangbuster" police need to be the smartest and recruit ex-gang members who have reformed to deal with this issue.
They need to train and begin in London, gain the necessary experience and skills required and then move throught he rest of the country and hunt down these ruthless murderers.
If they are breaking the law then charge them. If they are behaving anti-socially give them an ASBO. Toughen up ASBO conditions so that they contain an element of community service, at least 28 days of unpaid work in the community, and fine them at least £250. If the fine isn't paid within 28 days then their parent(s)/guardian(s) get the original £250 plus an additional £250.
Publish all the details on the respective Police web sites.
You mention "... The result is a culture of fear and alienation". Bugger their fear and alienation, what about their responsibilities? The rights of people not to live in fear of these runts and be alienated from their community have is paramount.
If they continue to behave badly send them to an approved school and bill their parent(s)/guardian(s).
Hit them hard and hit them where it hurts, shame them and shame their parent(s)/guardian(s) too.